Dead Reckoning: The New Science of Catching Killers, by Michael Baden and Marion Roach

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Dead Reckoning: The New Science of Catching Killers, by Michael Baden and Marion Roach

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The Gist: Learning To Love Forensic Pathology$25

A bread knife. The morgue. Major cognitive dissonance, right? Before reading Dead Reckoning, I wouldn't have made the connection either. (The tool is ideal for sectioning brains.) This engaging account of former New York City medical examiner Michael Baden's intimate dealings with the dead over the past two and a half decades is full of surprises.

Slowly, I overcame my queasiness and inched my chair closer, as coauthor Marion Roach did on her first visit to Baden's autopsy room, eager to hear more about the secrets revealed by stomach contents and how saline injections bring out fingerprint ridges on a dried-out body.

Baden, now a consulting forensic pathologist, functions as a sort of PI. In one notorious case, in which a man is suspected of shredding his wife in a wood chipper (Fargo, anyone?), Baden helped solve the crime by discovering that one of the minuscule fragments among the chips came from a skull.

Along with precision, a sense of humor is essential to the job. Sounding like a surreal Mr. Rogers, Baden says, "The morgue can be a busy and friendly place." He describes how the cops pass around doughnuts and cups of coffee (yes, truly), and how only those who live at the "absolute extreme fringe of machismo" opt for ham sandwiches when the food cart rolls by.

Yet who would have expected such poetry in the book's vivid descriptions? The hands of the newly dead, veins bulging, make Baden think of Michelangelo. In areas of the body where blood has pooled, flesh takes on the "swirling patterns of bedsheets" and other objects on which it has lain.

Forensic pathology blends basic science and applied technology. For example, DNA analysis can now be done on blood drawn by mosquitoes at a crime scene, and ultraviolet light can reveal long-healed bruises.

Despite some long asides on responsibility and integrity and not quite enough detail about the field, Baden and Roach deserve high praise. Anyone who can make the connection between Wayne Newton and forensic pathology - he performed at a pathologists' convention to rally support for exhuming Pocahontas' body - holds my attention.